Cora Crua an Tsaoil
by k4writer02
Summary: Jenny Reilly married a schoolteacher, but she never stopped being the Reilly girl with those Donnelly boys. Written after the pilot


Title: Cora Crua an Tsaoil; (Gaelic: the ups and downs of Life)

Characters: Jenny Reilly, Jenny/Tommy, mentions of all Donnelly brothers, OMC (Original Male Character—Jenny's husband)

Author: Kate, k4writer02

Rating: PG-13/R for language and mature subjects

Disclaimer: I do not own The Black Donnellys or any characters or settings. I'm just playing with them, but I'll put them back where I found them, when I'm done.

Summary: Jenny Reilly married a schoolteacher, but she never stopped being the Reilly girl with those Donnelly boys.

Jenny Reilly cannot remember a time before the Donnelly boys were part of her life.

More specifically, she cannot remember the time before one Donnelly in particular. Tommy. Tommy. Shot. Katie's voice on the phone, like she doesn't want her husband to hear.

Jenny's heart stops, thinking, "he'll never know I love him."

She thinks, I can't remember a time without him. I don't want to live long enough to know time without him.

From the time they were in diapers, Tommy protected her and competed with her and laughed with her and shouted at her. Loved her. He was her best friend, but she wasn't his.

He had Jimmy, Kevin, and baby Sean. Because he had them all, she did too. She remembers waiting with the three older boys to meet the baby when he came home from the hospital. She was in the house when Sean walked for the first time. Oh God, she thinks, as the train wheels clack, oh God, Sean came home from the hospital to all of us once before. He can do it again.

She whispers a Hail Mary in her mind, counting down the stops, thinking about the Donnellys.

She was there when Jimmy started walking again, too, after the hit and run that cracked his femur, shattered his fibula and tibia and, worst of all, destroyed the patella. Basically, every bone from his hip down. Jenny knows, because she went to the library with Tommy and they read together, to interpret the doctor's talk. With surgery, the tibia and fibula were repaired, but there wasn't anything to be done about the kneecap. Jimmy learned to walk again, but not without pain.

It's the reason his dope habit developed. A hit of whatever the guy on the corner was selling numbed the pain just as well as a prescription his family could barely afford—so Jimmy went off prescriptions and self-medicated.

Jenny knows all these things. Knows that Kevin's itch to play cards and dice and ponies and dogs and cocks and fights and games got worse and worse when the family needed money for the doctors and the meds and then, God help them, the funeral. Kevin was sure that his luck would turn. So sure that he threw whatever he had into gambling. And he lost and lost and didn't quite see how much harder he was making life.

It was Tommy, sobered by the accident, and Sean, the charmer, who helped most. Sean had a gift to entertain Jimmy during the long hours of recovery. And Tommy? Tommy was Jimmy's slave. Jenny thought it was because he hadn't been there with them that day, hadn't been there to jump in front of the careening black car, hadn't been there to watch Jimmy's back. Jimmy had only had Joey Ice Cream ("I scream" like a little girl under pressure) to watch his back. Even St. Jude, patron of lost causes, knew who not to rely on.

And Jenny. Jenny was there, getting cool cloths and bathing Jimmy's face when he burned with fever. She held the bucket when drugs made him nauseous. To this day, she knows how he likes his sandwiches (Wheat bread from O'Connor's bakery, thick sliced ham, spicy mustard, Swiss cheese "thin enough to read the Times through." Turkey and mayo and lettuce, with a sprinkle of salt and pepper, on sourdough.) He prefers potato salad to coleslaw ("What am I? A kraut-head?" ).

And he'll take anything she or his mother makes for dessert. A slice of coffeecake. A dumpling, a pie, pudding, fruit…but not ice cream. It sickens him to look at the stuff, associated as it was with that day.

It was during Jimmy's illness that Jenny started learning how to cook. There wasn't much she could do, but she had a knack for putting together a meal that Jimmy could eat and keep down. After Mr. Donnelly died, Jenny learned more, learned to help Helen to feed the four boys.

Jenny's mother approved whole-heartedly, had never much liked seeing Jenny run around the streets with four brothers. Not, of course, that her ma had ever wished a moment's harm on any of the Donnelly boys. But boys have one place, and girls have another. It was good to see Jenny take an interest in something that would parlay into success at the diner. It was good to see her learning something that would help make her a catch, later, when the time came to marry.

Time passed, and Jenny saw less of Tommy, because he was studying and drawing and dragging Kevin away from cards and Sean away from girls and Jimmy from fights and drugs. She was studying and dreaming and working at the diner. And then she was dating.

To this day, she can't explain exactly how it happened. A guy from the neighborhood who dropped by the Reilly's from time to time looked up and noticed that little Jenny Reilly wasn't so little. She'd been fourteen, going on fifteen. Her unkempt hair had been brushed and she filled out her T-shirt differently than she used to. Barry Clare, sixteen and flush with his first successful job for Huey, with a St. Patrick shamrock on a gold chain, had noticed that Jenny Reilly wasn't a little girl anymore. He'd asked her to a movie and at the theater, he'd covered her mouth with his and tried to investigate exactly what was filling out the shirt differently.

She copied a dirty trick she'd heard Jimmy describe, told the guy to fuck off. She'd gone to the Donnellys' to laugh about the fight she'd won.

But the boys didn't laugh.

Tommy turned red, and Kevin smirked, like he was swallowing a wisecrack, and Sean stared at her tits like he'd never seen them before and Jimmy slapped a wall and ranted about teaching Barry manners.

Jenny'd thrown her arms up into the air, almost like an Italian girl, "Calm down. I told you because it was supposed to be funny. I kneed him in the balls and when he hit the ground I kicked his butt. Come on! I kicked his butt." Four stony faces stared back. "That's funny," She insisted.

Tommy took a deep breath, couldn't quite meet her eyes. "You got lucky, Jenny. This time. Next time, tell someone, hey? We'll hang out, make sure you get home."

"I don't need a babysitter." Jenny hugged herself, rubbing her arms, because she was cold, because she was frightened, because she wanted to feel like one of the boys again. She realized that her pose was making her breasts stand out more than they already did. She dropped her arms to her side, and stood up. "I'm going home." But her voice wobbled and she wanted to cry and the boys didn't know what to do.

Helen had arrived then, and seen Jenny's face, so carefully made up, with too much eyeliner, streaking down her cheeks. She'd seen the mussed hair and read the defensive body language and she sent the boys to do something else while she fed Jenny tea and biscuits and got the whole story. Jenny had cried with Helen and told her things she couldn't tell her own mother, or girls her age. Jenny didn't have girlfriends. Jenny had the Donnelly boys, and, apparently, their mother. Helen had smoothed Jenny's dark hair and calmed her and walked her home.

Helen was more of a mother to Jenny than Jenny's own. Mrs. Reilly kept trying to put Jenny into a neat box, but Helen let Jenny be who she had to be—let her run and play with the boys, let her cook and cake her face with makeup until she realized that less was more.

The boys were dating too—Jimmy mostly ran with a girl who'd let him get as far as he could as fast as he could, and Tommy saw the good girls from the local parochial school a few times—enough to kiss, enough to cop a feel under the periwinkle blue uniform blouses. Kevin had girls aplenty, but none of them could touch Sean, who hadn't been single since the fourth grade.

A barrier grew up. The boys sometimes went silent when Jenny came into the room. And sometimes she heard more than she needed to know about her classmates at Sacred Heart of Jesus school on West 52nd. Of course, she knew things the boys would beg her to tell—who stuffed her bra and who didn't? Was so-and-so interested?

Jenny worked and dreamed and Tommy drew and dreamed and they were friends, but they had secrets that they'd never had before. She lent Kevin a little cash to cover bad bets, and she fed Jimmy at three in the morning when he was high and hungry and bitter about his gimpy leg.

And then? Then there was Him. The schoolteacher, as the neighborhood termed him. The most beautiful man she knew. Blue eyes that could penetrate her, make her squirm with pleasure and anticipation. Thick dark hair, worn long enough to brush his collar. Large hands, that touched her—her back, her hand, her hair, her breasts, her belly, her thighs—like she was porcelain and precious and beautiful. She felt like Cinderella around him.

He treated her like a woman, like a lady, which was a nice change from being one of the boys.

He could make her laugh and sigh at the stories he told—he was the kind of man who could buy and sell you even before the market opened. A natural salesman, but he'd become a teacher. He could talk to anyone. She once laughed that he could talk to the dioramas at the Natural History Museum and have a better conversation than she had with some of her customers.

He'd put himself through college with loans and dealing, and while she didn't entirely approve, it had gotten him an education, and a good one. And the dealing days were over, done the day he met her. He told her he tutored for extra cash, getting kids up to snuff for the Regent's exam. Told her he had a sick cousin, who called at night sometimes, which was why he'd run out to do an errand.

She believed him. Tried to, anyway. After all, she still answered when Kevin called from a poolroom, when Jimmy called from the corner, when Sean text-messaged from his girlfriend's closet, when Tommy called for anything. She understood loyalty to people who may not deserve it. Understood love, unconditional love, for people who break your heart. She didn't ask questions she didn't want answered.

She was twenty when they got married, and Tommy asked only two questions, "Do you love him? Will he be good to you?"

He didn't meet her eyes for two days after, and she thinks that Tommy probably had a conversation with Him, the kind her father wouldn't have because he trusted Jenny's instincts.

Jimmy asked Jenny more questions, when she told him. "Are you pregnant? Then are you insane? You can't trust him, Jenny. Please, please don't tell me you're buying his shit. That way of talking won't mean jack to a landlord—Jenny, you're smart. You can do better."

"Better ain't come around, and Jimmy, I can't wait for something that might never happen." She'd answered. "Come on, say you're happy for me. He's got a good job, Jimmy, and a future. We're gonna help Ma and Pop retire to Florida, maybe. He's going to take me to Ireland for the honeymoon. We're going to see dolphins along the coast and kiss the Blarney stone and all that tourist shit."

"You sure about the job, Jenny?" Jimmy looked edgy, like a long-tailed cat in a room of rocking chairs.

"Of course! He even picks up extra hours, tutoring." Stupid little girl. Jenny thought, in retrospect. Jimmy had twitched, when she'd mentioned a job. That should've been a clue, since Jimmy had barely finished high school for all the fights he provoked with the Italians, with the boys who stared at his bad leg or at his girlfriends, with the busts for smoking in the boy's bathroom.

Jimmy didn't know teachers, but he seemed to know her blue-eyed Jason. Sweet-talking Jason. Salesman Jason.

Their reception was at the diner, which the Reillys had closed for the event. She wore white, like Holy Communion, but she knew that every woman in the room was eyeing her midsection, trying to spot a tell-tale bump.

She wasn't pregnant, couldn't be, which she'd told Tommy to tell Jimmy. Jason had fingered her, but she'd saved her hymen for the wedding night. Jimmy and Tommy got drunker than she'd ever seen them at the reception. And she'd seen them the first night they tried whiskey, the cheap kind that an older guy bought them, to teach them a lesson. They'd split a bottle of eight-dollar whiskey and nearly poisoned themselves—Jenny'd taken one shot and decided she liked being able to taste, thanks very much.

Kevin was trying to manage the older boys (Sean was no help—he spent the entire time hitting on her bridesmaids) and even through her veil, Jenny could see there was something wrong with the picture of Kevin taking care of Tommy and Jimmy.

But Jason, of the sweet talk and beautiful eyes, Jason whirled her across the dance floor and whispered sweet nothings and they disappeared upstairs at their own wedding reception to fool around in the bed she'd slept in throughout her childhood and adolescence.

They hadn't gotten to the main event when somebody started caterwauling outside on the fire escape (I'll take you home, Kathleen; Danny Boy; When Irish Eyes Are Smiling—the idiot had ripped pages out of the Irish anthems book and made her ears bleed with poor renditions). Then she heard glasses shattering—the guests must be really mad, to throw good beer at bad singing—but it was bottles, not cups or glasses. She hoped. A broken cup was bad luck, on a wedding day.

The medley killed the mood, so she fixed her dress and took Jason back downstairs, to catcalls and toasts. She threw her bouquet (Katie Sullivan, the slut, caught it) and Jason slipped off her garter and tossed it and of course Tommy caught it, and he was drunk enough to touch the thing that had touched her thigh as reverently as if it were her body.

Jenny'd felt irrational jealousy as Tommy ran his hands up Katie's leg, while the guests bayed, "higher, higher!" It was a stupid tradition, wasn't it, to declare that the level of fun on the honeymoon depended on how high the garter got on the bouquet-catcher's thigh?

She'd disobeyed so many traditions. Got married on a Saturday in May, never mind Granny's croak, "Marry in May, rue the day!" Never mind that Saturday is bad luck. Let Ma congratulate her first, though it's bad luck to get congratulations from a woman and not a man.

Some things she did obey. The top tier of their cake was a whiskey cake and she'd saved a slice in the freezer, saved it patiently to eat on their first child's christening. There'd been a horseshoe, despite her protests, stuck in the cake, behind the bride and groom. But whatever fool had put it there had put it tines down, so the luck could run out.

Jenny is not superstitious. But she wonders about these things, when Jason disappears. And he does disappear. She'd believe he left if he'd emptied their joint accounts (he didn't), if he'd taken his clothes or his books or any of the things he owned. He didn't take a thing, just vanished into thin air.

She tries to believe he's coming back.

He's coming back, so she can get pregnant and they can christen their child and eat the damn cake out of the freezer.

But the neighborhood never stopped calling her Jenny Reilly. Never gave her Jason's last name. She's not sure if they're treating her like a widow or a virgin.

Jenny Reilly wonders if it would've been different if she'd taken up with a Donnelly. If Helen would've crumbled cake over her, to make them friends for life. If the neighborhood could've adapted to Jenny Donnelly. She's never been without the Donnelly boys.

Without one Donnelly boy in particular.

So when Katie O'Malley (nee Sullivan), the slut who caught the bouquet and showed Tommy a good time on Jenny's wedding night, calls to tell Jenny that a Donnelly was shot, Jenny's heart stops.

She wonders why her heart didn't stop when she realized Jason was missing.

And then she packs ingredients to make sandwiches for Helen and Jimmy and Kevin and Sean.

And then she finds out that it's not Tommy, it's Sean, and he was beaten, not shot.

And her heart starts again.

It beats in time to the train.

Author's note: I only researched Hell's Kitchen and parishes briefly, so if you see mistakes, please do correct me. Sacred Heart is the traditionally Irish parish, and they do have a school, but I'm not sure if it's a high school. Go with it anyway:) Thank you!

I think the show mentioned a different church in the pilot, but that part of my tape got recorded over (arrggh), so if anyone remembers better what canon says, please tell me!

I did a little research on Irish wedding traditions—breaking a glass is bad luck, getting congratulated first by a woman instead of a man is bad luck, Saturdays are bad luck, May is bad, though April is good and May 1st is traditionally pretty good fortune. Horseshoes are good luck—they're often carried with a bouquet or sewed on a dress, but some people attach them to cakes—but you're supposed to put them tines up, so it looks like a "U", to prevent the luck from falling out.

The whiskey cake thing is real—some people eat a slice on the first anniversary, though it's traditionally supposed to be eaten at your first child's baptism celebration.

Constructive criticism and feedback are very welcome—this is my first foray in The Black Donnellys fiction!

Completed March 1, 2007


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